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‘The Gospel’: how Israel uses AI to select bombing targets in Gaza

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Written by Harry Davies, Bethan McKernan and Dan Sabbagh in Jerusalem and 972's Yuval Abraham Harry Davies, Bethan McKernan and Dan Sabbagh in Jerusalem and 972's Yuval Abraham
Published: 01 December 2023 01 December 2023

The latest Israel-Hamas war has provided an unprecedented opportunity for the IDF to use such tools in a much wider theatre of operations and, in particular, to deploy an AI target-creation platform called “the Gospel”, which has significantly accelerated a lethal production line of targets that officials have compared to a “factory”.

The Guardian can reveal new details about the Gospel and its central role in Israel’s war in Gaza, using interviews with intelligence sources and little-noticed statements made by the IDF and retired officials.

This article also draws on testimonies published by the Israeli-Palestinian publication +972 Magazine and the Hebrew-language outlet Local Call, which have interviewed several current and former sources in Israel’s intelligence community who have knowledge of the Gospel platform.

Their comments offer a glimpse inside a secretive, AI-facilitated military intelligence unit that is playing a significant role in Israel’s response to the Hamas massacre in southern Israel on 7 October.

The slowly emerging picture of how Israel’s military is harnessing AI comes against a backdrop of growing concerns about the risks posed to civilians as advanced militaries around the world expand the use of complex and opaque automated systems on the battlefield.

“Other states are going to be watching and learning,” said a former White House security official familiar with the US military’s use of autonomous systems.

The Israel-Hamas war, they said, would be an “important moment if the IDF is using AI in a significant way to make targeting choices with life-and-death consequences”.

Read more at the Guardian:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/dec/01/the-gospel-how-israel-uses-ai-to-select-bombing-targets

The breaking story came from +972 Magazine:

‘A mass assassination factory’: Inside Israel’s calculated bombing of Gaza

The Israeli army’s expanded authorization for bombing non-military targets, the loosening of constraints regarding expected civilian casualties, and the use of an artificial intelligence system to generate more potential targets than ever before, appear to have contributed to the destructive nature of the initial stages of Israel’s current war on the Gaza Strip, an investigation by +972 Magazine and Local Call reveals. These factors, as described by current and former Israeli intelligence members, have likely played a role in producing what has been one of the deadliest military campaigns against Palestinians since the Nakba of 1948.

https://www.972mag.com/mass-assassination-factory-israel-calculated-bombing-gaza/

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